


Marooned

by Bellovesus



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-06-27 14:07:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15686946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellovesus/pseuds/Bellovesus
Summary: Mutants being shipped to a private internment and research facility in Guam are missing and presumed dead.Part of the Suffering in Silence series.





	1. Chapter 1

The smoking wreckage of the aeroplane's fuselage drifted above the water, though it was taking some on board and would soon be submerged beneath the Pacific Ocean.

Inside, a blue jumpsuit-wearing young man was strapped to an upturned gurney. Electrical nodes and intravenous feeding tubes festooned him. The boy, who was about sixteen years of age, woke with a start. His blurry gaze tried to take in everything around him, including the sea water which was fast immersing him, coming in from the broken tail section of the fuselage.

The water was rising to the boy's chin. He tried to remain calm as he gently wiggled his thin body beneath the straps. Then, as his vision became more clear, he saw that his wrists were cuffed to the gurney, which was now bobbing up and down in the water. 

The sound of metal creaking and groaning echoed in the boy's ears as more seawater entered the plane. In desperation, he hit his cuffed wrists against the frame of the gurney. He had no idea how long he had been restrained this way. He maintained his concentration on the task at hand as water rushed in an engulfed his head. The boy gulped as much air as was left inside the plane, before he was submerged beneath the water.

Again and again, he tried to free himself. He actually managed to break free of the left handcuff, but he was running out of air and his panic in the effort was not helping him. A few more whacks broke the right hand cuff. But the boy was still strapped to the gurney and he was entombed inside a sinking aeroplane. His feet kicked uselessly under the straps. Air bubbles were flowing from his nose as conscious deserted him. 

An instinctive reaction happened. It felt like an explosion from inside his chest and emanated outward. It felt real enough and it even cause the remnants of the plane to sunder into shards of metal. Somehow, it also destroyed the gurney he was strapped on. 

Shaking himself into the wakefulness, the boy kicked his legs and threw his arms up as he lurched his slender body up toward the surface. But he was too far below. He began to black out. There was no air left in his lungs. 

The last thing he saw, perhaps a hallucination, was of a petite blonde girl, clad in a blue-jumpsuit like his, swimming toward him. Somehow, it looked like bubbles surrounded her head and obscured her face.

The girl swam close enough. She screamed some words through the water, but the boy lost consciousness before he could hear her words.  
\-----

The boy felt the sun and wind upon his skin. He felt lips upon his lips, breathing down his mouth. He rolled over and spluttered out seawater and vomit. Small feminine hands gently rubbed his back.

He sank his face to the sand as he breathed heavily. 

"You're okay, you're okay!" A girl's voice, gentle and sad, kept telling him repeatedly.

He rolled on to his back and rubbed his eyes. A lovely, round face with soft brown eyes, full lips and framed by golden hair that was soaked through gazed with concern on the boy. 

"I thought I lost you," she smiled gently. "I thought you drowned back there." She wiped away the tears at her eyes.

"The boy looked up at her in frustration before wincing from the sharp sensation that was pounding inside his skull. He clutched his head and moaned painfully.

The girl cradled his head against her full-breasted chest. It's so okay, Andy," she told him as though they were both still young children. "We'll be fine."

He looked up at her with a confused look. "Andy?" He finally gasped.

The girl had a fresh look of concern in her eyes before her hand felt the wound on his scalp. Looking at the congealed blood in his matted hair, she gasped in despair. "Oh Jesus, no!" She sobbed. She cupped the boy's face in his hands. "I'm Lauren, your sister. And your Andy. Do you remember anything about yourself? Anything at all?!"

Andy blinked. He panicked. I don't..." he started saying. Then he closed his eyes and passed out in front of his sister. 

"Oh shit, Andy!" She patted him on the cheek. "Andy! Andy!!!" She shouted frantically through breathless sobs.  
\-------

Andy awoke when the sun was dipping below the western horizon. Lauren, the pretty blonde who claimed to be his sister, was there with him. Her face was tear-stained. Andy rolled along the ground before propping himself on his elbows. 

Lauren, seeing her little brother regaining consciousness, gave a sigh of relief. She crawled over to him and gathered Andy into her arms. "Take it easy, now," she whispered in a tired voice.

Andy tried to focus. "A little dizzy," he mumbled hoarsely.

Lauren rested him against a tree. She curled up next to Andy and stroked his head. She considered her next words. "How much can you remember?" Lauren asked him gently.

The boy sighed, evidently in a lot of pain. "Nothing!" Andy replied. "I don't...I don't remember anything," he murmured, sounding scared and depressed.

Lauren caressed her brother's brow. "Shh!" She whispered. "We'll be okay!" She tried to reassure him, barely believing it herself. "Listen!" Lauren told Andy as she looked into his eyes. "You're Andrew Daniel Strucker," Lauren said more firmly. "And I'm Lauren Jennifer Strucker. We're from Atlanta. And we're mutants."

Andy blinked when she got to the last part. "Mutants?!" He spluttered. The horror in his eyes was palpable.

Lauren hugged him harder. "I know it's a lot to take in," she whispered. "But..I..I just need you to trust me, okay?" Lauren babbled. "We're mutants, but we're not bad people. We're just trying to survive."

Andy glanced about, taking in his surroundings. "Where are we?" They were very close to the beach and there were palm trees all about them. 

"I don't know!" Lauren replied. "We were on a aeroplane to Guam, but we crashed into the ocean. I don't know what this island's called. I guess we're somewhere in the Pacific."

Andy climbed to his feet and leaned against a tree. He saw the blue jumpsuit on his body. "We were prisoners on that plane!" It wasn't a question, but Lauren conceded with a nod. 

"There's some sort of facility for mutant detainees in Guam. They were especially interested in sending us there." 

"Wouldn't there be a distress signal from the plane or something?" Andy asked Lauren.

"Probably," Lauren nodded, "but it may be them who will pick it up."

"Are we the only survivors from the crash."

"As far as I know. Honestly, I only came for you. Those bastards were transporting us to Guam."

Andy staggered from the tree. Lauren got up to steady him. "Just sit, Andy!" She persuaded him gently. 

Andy sank to his knees. "How long have we been here?"

"A day at least," she told him. "I don't know how many hours it's been. I was worried about you the whole time..." Her voice started breaking as she burst into tears. Andy folded his distressed sister in his arms. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I can't be strong enough for both of us," she sniffed. She threw a scornful wave at some twigs on the sand. "I couldn't even start a fire," Lauren said bitterly.

After a moment, Andy gathered some rocks and laid their around the the nest of twigs. The boy then clashed some flinty stones together. After several tries, sparks flew and lit the dried branches. Andy then leaned low, despite the intense pain in his skull and blew gently below the fire, feeding the flames.

A relieved smile appeared on Lauren's face. She knelt down behind her younger brother and placed a kiss on top of his head. "You at least remember how to start a fire," she whispered. 

Andy shrugged. "I don't know anything else."

Lauren took one of his hands in hers. "I'm sure it'll all come back," she replied, trying to sound more hopeful than she felt.

Andy smiled back. "Yeah, I'm sure," he stated fervently.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lauren tries to help Andy recollect his memories.

There were dim memories of casting a fishing rod reeling in his catch, but Andy recalled nothing much of his old life. The girl he was with, Lauren, was cute. But she also claimed to be his sister, so he left his shame about such thoughts unsaid. She seemed nice enough. She was even helpful and supportive of him.

The siblings stood in the shallows of the beach where some fish were trapped. Andy still felt light-headed from his trauma, so Lauren was there more to help him stay on his feet, even as he exerted himself. 

Lauren was a bit skittish about catching the fish with her bare hands, so Andy had to kneel in the shallows and tickle the fish out the water. He threw it out of the water for Lauren to catch, but she let out a little scream and scuttled away as the fish dropped back into the water. Both siblings laughed. Andy went on retrieving the fish.

Soon, they caught a large fish with black scales and brought it to their campfire further up from the beach. Andy cut the fish open at the belly with a sharp stone, removed its guts, causing Lauren to cover her nose, and lay its parts on the rocks next to the fire.

"You were supposed to catch it," Andy told his sister.

"I wasn't expecting you to just throw it at me," Lauren replied in protest. Deep down, it comforted her that her brother, despite his memory loss, still retained his old personality.

"I thought you wanted to eat." Andy shot back at her. He did most of the work of catching their meal. "I thought you women loved to cook, anyway!"

Lauren smiled and rolled her eyes. "That's so unbelievably sexist, even for you."

"Good!" Andy grinned. For some reason, he found that he enjoyed pushing Lauren's buttons.

"You just about said that a women's place was in the kitchen," Lauren chided him.

"No. I said you women loved cooking," Andy started. Lauren nodded sarcastically. "Oh, but not YOU, of course," he continued. "For you, you're place is lounging around, doing your hair and nails!"

Lauren gave out a shocked-sounding squeak and tackled Andy from the left side as he was cooking the fish. She playfully rubbed his lank hair into the sand. They were both laughing. "Fucking hell, do you want breakfast or don't you?" Andy chuckled. 

They ate the fish while sitting on the sand. They both eschewed the blue jumpsuits and were dressed only in their undergarments. It was very humid but for the breeze from the sea.

"So, were we in school ever?" Andy asked Lauren.

She nodded. "I was in my eleventh grade year, while you were a freshman."

Andy chewed his food before swallowing the last of his meagre breakfast. "What was it like for us? School, I mean."

Lauren paused before answering. "I was getting straight A's. I had college planned out."

"And me?" 

Lauren hesitated. "You were struggling."

"Oh," Andy replied. "I wasn't one of the bright kids, then?"

"Oh no," Lauren said, this time without hesitating. "I remember you did get a score of 2100 on your SAT's during your last year in junior high," she earnestly told her brother. "But you were just struggling with your grades in senior high school. Mom and Dad thought you had problems with bullying and stuff." Lauren knew that Andy was a lot smarter than he let on, though he never liked to show it. At times she even believed it herself with his, often deliberately, bratty attitude and facade.

"I was bullied?" Andy asked with disappointment in his voice.

Lauren nodded sadly. "You never wanted to talk about it. You were very shut down at times. I did see the give you trouble. I wanted to help, but you kept your distance." Lauren sounded like she was making excuses and she knew it. 

To this day, it shamed her that she couldn't have helped Andy when he needed her. She remembered Trevor; a smug asshole in her grade who casually harassed and put his hands on smaller kids. Lauren was herself intimidated by Trevor and avoided him where she could. It made her sick to her stomach knowing that Andy suffered at his hands, and she did hardly anything about it. Even a couple of years after learning about her mutant ability, she knew she could have shielded her little brother, but she considered that she was keeping them all safe by keeping her secret, even on those occasions when she spied Trevor and his friends punch Andy in the head and kick him to the ground. Lauren felt like such a coward.

She pushed those thoughts out of her mind. Andy needed her to be strong for him. "You're also an amazing artist," Lauren told him with a smile.

"Really?" Andy seemed pleased with that. "Doing what?" 

"You draw. Usually animals, nature. Stuff like that." It was true, Lauren was actually jealous of Andy's talents with pencil and paper; he drew very fast and his drawings were highly detailed and accurate. "You also skate," she went on. "You tried to teach me once, but..um..it just wasn't for me." Lauren thought for a second, but decided not to mention his penchant for beat boxing. "And you also used to play the piano with Mom when you little until you quit. You got very shy whenever you had to play in front of other people."

"Did you play piano, too?" Andy asked her.

Lauren shook her head mournfully. "I couldn't do that either. I played the clarinet, though. And I sang in the choir in church and at the school."

The siblings then went on a stroll beneath the canopy of the jungle as they discussed their past together. They never strayed too far from the beach.

"What did we do after we knew we were mutants?" Andy asked his sister.

Lauren had her arm around Andy's ribs as they walked. "We joined the Mutant Underground," she told him. "We helped people like us who were in trouble. We even helped the Underground escape when Sentinel Services came to get us." Lauren thought that there would be plenty of time to tell her brother about Fenris later.

"Okay, so what else did we do?" Andy was interested.

Lauren paused before answering. "That's it, mostly!" 

She decided not to tell Andy that he decided to join the Hellfire Club after their departure from Atlanta. She could not tell him that they disagreed fiercely over the intentions of the Frost Sisters, their views on their great-grandfather Andreas Von Strucker, and whether or not they should take the fight against the human authorities whom persecuted their ilk. The memory of their separation was still as fresh in Lauren's mind as it was painful for her. 

And perhaps, she wondered, she might persuade her brother of the rightness of her cause, assuming he did not regain his memory. Lauren struggled with the ethics of lying by omission to Andy in her mind. 

She loved Andy deeply, and did not wish to lose him. 

Never again! Lauren thought.

Lauren led Andy to a stream in the forest uphill from the beach. At her urging, Andy sat down and allowed Lauren to tenderly wash the dried blood from his scalp. Lauren shuddered the ugly, raw scar marring the top of Andy's head. She even saw a glint of grey metal: Bullet fragments were lodged partway under the scalp.

Lauren quickly wiped away a tear. That guard on the plane found out that she had somehow removed her shock-collar and was trying to free her brother from the apparatus with which they kept Andy under and induced coma. Andy had been regaining consciousness and was about to knock out the guard with a mini shock wave, despite him still being cuffed and strapped on the gurney. The guard had quickly fired a shot at Andy's head. It grazed the top of his head, but Lauren was distraught when it happened. She thought Andy was dead for sure, but then he had a seizure and issued a release of energy which broke off the tail section and sent them crashing into the waves. 

Lauren had been sucked out of the aeroplane by the depressurising air. On instinct, she erected a bubble around herself which allowed her to land softly into the sea. She followed the wreck for some distance, seeing the fuselage take on water before sinking. Lauren frantically swam to save Andy.

She recovered him, brought him ashore, did mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and sat with him for hours.

Lauren hesitated to remove the fragments.

"Won't they get infected?" Andy asked her.

"I don't know," she replied. "But they would have had a medical kit on the plane...."

"...Which is now underwater!" Andy finished for her gloomily.

Lauren wrapped her arms around her baby brother and reassuringly kissed him on the head. "We'll get in there," she told him firmly. Whatever happened, Lauren was determined to protect Andy; even from himself.

"We'll get it!" Lauren told him again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The personnel of the anti-mutant agency home in on the location of the plane crash.

The Strucker siblings swam out into the ocean. Lauren reckoned she could last longer underwater, as she was able to shroud herself inside a bubble to retaining air. Yet Andy insisted on diving down with her.

"Okay," Lauren told her brother. "But you'll have to stay very close, since neither of us are very experienced divers anyway."

Andy just shrugged. "It's not like we have a choice," he replied.

"But you do," Lauren retorted. "I'm the one with the shields, I could do this myself."

"But can your 'shields' help you escape from marine life?" Andy countered her. He had been relearning his powers the previous day. He had managed to uproot a tree with a shock wave. Lauren was satisfied the the result, at least.

She gave up debating with him. Even with amnesia, he was still the same old cocksure Andy.

Lauren held Andy close. They were both strong swimmers, but Lauren wanted to keep them both active under the water long enough to find what they needed, and Andy was still experiencing headaches.

The shield was formed around both their heads before they dived together beneath the sea. Lauren had an arm around Andy's waist so as to share her air-bubble. They swam to the ocean floor to swim amongst the plane wreckage.

"Remember," Lauren said softly in Andy's ear, "take slow breaths and take your time. We have very limited air between us."

Andy gently tapped his sister's hand in acknowledgement. The swam through the damaged tail section and glided through the interior together.

Both siblings were inwardly thrilled to be exploring the sea floor in this fashion. After several days since the plane crash, colourful fish were already making their home inside the steel ruins. Lauren and Andy swum towards the cockpit. They braced themselves before seeing the pale forms of the water-bloated, fish-nibbled corpses of the pilot. 

Seeing their unsightly bodies slowly bob in the water sent shivers down Andy's spine. He recalled fleeting shadows of memories of his past. Memories where he thought and killed others.

Lauren, herself shaken by the sight of the corpses, noticed her brother's discomfort and held Andy close. "Easy now," she whispered. "We need to focus!"

The siblings eventually located the first aid pack before resurfacing. They waded on to the beach. There was only antiseptics and bandages. Lauren settled for the former, and gently rubbed it on Andy's scalp. "There's people in the Underground who would know how to treat this," she muttered. "Mom too. She was a nurse."

"Yeah," replied Andy. "You were saying before..." The boy was still rattled by the flashbacks of his past. "Hey, did were kill anyone? In the Underground, I mean."

Lauren swallowed hard. She was aware of Andy's activities with the Hellfire Club, and his slaughter of the Purifiers while with them. "We did what we had to, sometimes." Lauren told her brother. "When Sentinel Services hit our headquarters in Atlanta, we had to evacuate everyone. You and me stayed back. We used Fenris to destroy the building and the people following us." The experience haunted Lauren's dreams to this day. 

Andy defended their actions after that, but Lauren knew the experience saddened him as much as it did her. She knew of Andy's atrocities with Hellfire, but wanted to help Andy turn back to the Underground and the right side. Telling him more of the truth, especially now, would complicate matters for them out here.

"Fenris..." Andy mulled the word over. "We....we joined hands, and..."

Lauren rounded on her brother. "Look, Andy," she addressed him more brusquely than she intended. "You..I..we did what we had to," Lauren softened her voice as she continued. "There's no need to rehash the past right now."

Andy eyed his older sister suspiciously. "Sure," he relented in a guarded tone. "Painful memories, right?"

Lauren nodded hastily. Though she feared that Andy saw through her. "Let's just check those fish traps," She suggested.  
\-------

The following morning, the Struckers awoke to the sound of shouts coming from the beach. The siblings had slept side-by side near the fire. The flames had long since petered out during the night, but it was possible that the newcomers to the island could have detected the smoke. 

Lauren and Andy crept into the bush and remained concealed as heavy-booted feet snapped twigs on the ground.

Lauren remembered them as personnel from AnthropCorps: The militarised arm of Humanity Today. She tapped Andy on the arm to signal that they should crawl further through the bush away from the AnthropCorps soldiers.

But it was in vain; the soldiers were equipped with infrared goggles which detected the mutants. Rifles were cocked and trained on their location. The siblings then knew that they had been caught.

"You two. In the bushes. Come out with your hands held high. Now!" The lead A.C. soldier shouted hoarsely.

Fearfully, Lauren and Andy emerged in the open as ordered. 

One of the soldiers held a scanning device to their faces. "It's them!" He muttered in affirmation. The leader of the group directed two of his men forward to lock on the shock-collars around the necks of the mutants.

But without warning, an amnesiac Andy, gazing at them with steely eyes, chopped down his right hand and sent a shock wave which hurled the seven-strong A.C. group through the trees.

Andy turned to a fearful Lauren. "Run!" He shouted.

The siblings ran barefoot through the forested interior of the island before their pursuers could recover from Andy's bone-crunching assault.

The Struckers were in for a chase by the elite soldiers of Humanity Today.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The pursuit by AnthropCorps for the Struckers is on.

They hotfooted it through the trees under the rising sun. Not looking back but hearing the frantic shouts of the AnthropCorps soldiers who had come to the island for them.

Lauren struggled to keep pace with Andy's longer strides. Her brother glanced back and abruptly grabbed her arm and pulled her along with him.

A drone flew overhead, spotting the siblings as they raced beneath the canopy. A shot rang past Andy's head. The sound triggered more buried memories, but the boy forced himself on getting his sister to safety.

"I've got a bead on them!" A soldier shouted from behind. Lauren held up her hand and formed a shield of compressed air behind herself and Andy. The bullet bounced off the shield. But it was difficult for Lauren to maintain the shield and keep up with Andy, so she stopped. 

"What are you doing?" Andy shouted at her as he stopped to look back at her.

"Keep going, I'll hold 'em off," Lauren yelled breathlessly.

Andy glanced at the group closing in on them. "Fuck that!" He growled in anger.

Lauren glanced toward Andy and noticed a fierce light glowing from her brother's palms and fingers. Somehow, Andy recalled his skill with producing fireballs. He then held his hands close together to produce an increasing critical mass of incandescence and hurled it at the soldiers. 

Lauren closed her eyes from the glare of the explosion as it incinerated several soldiers and force the others to seek cover.

Andy produced another fireball. "D'you motherfuckers want more?!" He screamed at the others he spotted through the trees beside the spreading flames of the aftermath. "Because I can do this shit all day!"

Lauren, terrified, tugged on her younger sibling's arm. "Come on," she gasped. 

They both resumed their race through the forest. Far behind them, one of the soldier got on his radio.

"Send the gunship," he ordered. "We'll maintain the pursuit."  
\--------

After a while, the Struckers leaned against trees on the higher plateaus of the island. They knew that other soldier would come for them.

There's not many places to hide on this island," Lauren panted. Sweat glistened on her brow and soaked her blond hair. She was kneeling next to the tree.

Andy leaned down on his knees. He glared down the slopes, expecting the AC's to be coming up any second. "We just need to get to higher ground," he told his sister in a determined voice. "They're more afraid of us than we are of them. We just need to see them coming from all sides."

Lauren sighed. She wasn't sharing her brother's enthusiasm. "They probably have a helicopter, Andy. They definitely have drones. They have more eyes then we do."

It was Andy's turn to sigh at Lauren's pessimism. "Well, we're further from the sea than we are from the top of this hill. I'd rather save my energy for the next fight, if it's all the same to you."

Lauren rolled her eyes. It always came back to this. "There's a lot of them out there, you realise that, right?"

"And none of them have our powers," shot back Andy. "Do you realise that?!" The boy resumed his trek up the high, wooded hill.

"Goddamn it, Andy," muttered Lauren, whose bare feet hurt from running through the jungle. She pulled her self up and climbed the hill with Andy.

After a while, Lauren had to stop again. She hissed in pain.

Andy looked back, "What's up?"

Lauren slid down and felt her left foot. It was bleeding. "I stepped on something," she gasped painfully.

Andy slid down to Lauren's side to examine her foot. There were detached thorns lodged in her foot. Andy picked them out one by one.

"Can you walk?" Andy asked his sister.

Lauren got up and staggered a few painful steps. Without asking, Andy lifted the girl over his shoulder and resumed his half-walk, half-climb up the hill. The boy held Lauren with one hand while used the other to grab tree branches to drag himself along. 

The Struckers lay on the rocky plateau above the jungle floor of the island after reaching the highest slopes. The harsh glare of the sun was now beating upon them. Andy and Lauren's skins were turning bright red.

Andy lay on his front, looking down the hill. He had uncommonly sharp eyesight (though it was not a mutant ability), but if they AC's were out there, they were too well concealed behind the treeline below the plateau.

Lauren, resting against a large rock, flexed the toes of her left foot. Unfortunately, they had left the medical kit behind at the campsite.

"We need to hide," Lauren stated.

"Where?" Andy asked harshly.

"I..I don't know..." Lauren stammered.

But then, the humming of the blades of a helicopter gunship came from the south-east. 

Andy stood up and produced a fireball. But before he could develop it, canisters were shot from the sides of the gunship. They landed on the stony ground in front of the Struckers, issuing out tear gas. The smoke obscured their vision and made them choke on the fumes.

Andy threw the fireball at the helicopter, but his fit of coughing ruined his concentration, and the hydrogen ball missed the gunship wide off the mark. He turned to pick up Lauren off the ground, but the helicopter edged closer. 

Andy felt something very needle-sharp jab him in the arm. The boy glanced around to see a tranquilizer dart lodged in the meat of his arm. Lauren turned to see it too. 

"Andy, stop," she began, but her brother tried to quicken the pace. He got close to a rocky outcropping jutting above the plateau, but then he felt drowsy and lost control of his motor functions. Andy's legs gave out from under him and collapsed to the hard ground, with Lauren falling on top of him. She grunted as she fell. 

"Oh no no no no! Oh shit!" Lauren shouted, very close to tears. "Andy, wake up!" She shouted frantically.

But the gunship was hovering above them, and a squad of armed AC soldiers slid down cables to surround the siblings and brought their rifles to bear.

"Give it up, girl!" One of the soldiers ordered Lauren. "It's over."

In a great amount of pain and cradling her younger sibling's head in her arms, Lauren just wept. She knew she could have used her air-compression to knock the helicopter from the sky, but it was too late for that. She felt weak from hunger and physically drained. Lauren couldn't even summon the will to deal with the the AC's. She wept helplessly as the soldiers put the collars around their necks and carried Lauren and the unconscious Andy on to the helicopter gunship.   
\----------

They were flown off the island and landed on to the deck of a former United States Navy Ticonderoga-class destroyer, which was acquired for service by the AnthropCorps. 

The gunship landed on the helipad before the half-naked Struckers were carried to a holding cell below decks. Andy, being the most dangerous of the two siblings, was chained to a gurney and hooked up with a drip-feed where a barbiturate drug would keep the boy in a medically-induced coma, as was the case when they were on the aeroplane intended for Guam.

Lauren, who was herself strapped into a gurney, looked to one of the soldiers. "He has bullet fragments in his scalp," he told him earnestly. "He needs a doctor."

The soldier regarded the mutant girl disdainfully. "One's being sent here now. So you had best behave yourself and keep your bitch-mouth shut, or I'll end him back."

Lauren obediently kept quiet.

The ship's doctor came and tended to Andy's head wound before he tended to the cuts on Lauren's feet.

After he left, Lauren cried helplessly as she lay next to her comatose brother, who she had lied to and failed to protect, even though he was determined to fight for them both. Same old story, she thought bitterly to herself.

The lights below deck went down and it was very humid. Lauren dreaded the moment of their final destination.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lauren and Andy arrive in Guam.

Lauren awoke when AC's entered the brig and took her and Andy off the ship. A blindfold was put over Lauren's eyes. Andy was still in his medically-induced coma. The siblings, on their gurneys, were loaded into vans and driven some distance to a private facility on the island.

Lauren heard the heavy boots of military personnel and their harsh voices as they dragged her and her brother off the van. She was under-dressed and felt the strong ocean breeze on her skin.

"These muties have been specially requested by the WRD," one of the soldiers muttered. 

"They must be, having crashed a plane by themselves."

"Where are you taking us?" Lauren uttered in a petrified voice. Her answer was a stinging backhand across her face.

"Say something again, you mutie-cunt!" Growled a soldier, likely the one whom slapped Lauren.

Fighting back tears, Lauren kept her silence.

They were finally brought to a large, airy room in the Weapons and Research Department of the AnthropCorps' private facility.

Lauren lay on her gurney, strapped into place and blindfolded. She wriggled her hands and feet in their restraints. "Andy!" She whispered furtively. "Andy!" Lauren called out again with more force in her voice. But her brother was still in his coma. Oblivious to the world.

Lauren broke down and cried.  
\---------

Andy found himself looking at a suburban house which seemed strangely familiar to him. Hearing the playful screams and laughter of children, Andy followed the voices into the back yard. 

He saw two small, light-haired children, a girl and a boy, circling each other on the grass, playing with toy light sabres.

The boy, the younger of the two children, leaned forward on the ground, reached out his toy light sabre and slapped it on the girl's legs.

"Ow, Andy, stop it!" The little blonde girl yelped before she tapped him on his head with her own light sabre.

Andy smiled at the action, then found himself in a poorly-lit car park, watching a group of people running away from several robotic drones. They stopped when a blonde girl held up a force field to keep the drones at bay.

She looked like Lauren.

One of the group, a petite Asian woman with purple hair, opened up what looked to be a wormhole in which several jumped inside. One of the two people stayed back for an instant, one of them was a tall, thin teenage boy who instinctively reached out the the drones converge on him and an older man. The ground trembled and the drones were stopped in the tracks as if something held them. The bared his teeth like he was straining, then as he parted his hands, all the drones were ripped apart.

The scenery faded and Andy found himself in a field at sundown. Hundreds of people were screaming and fled from a youth who was hurling balls of fire at them with abandon. The smell of cooked human flesh was strong in the air. The youth sent a shock wave into the ground which propelled him into the air for some distance before he landed in front of the panicking crowd and resumed his vicious attack. Andy was horrified by the massacre, then saw his own face on the killer-mutant.

Andy was now standing in a basement, holding some girl's hand.

It was Lauren.

There were four grey and black uniformed people approaching the siblings. They were linked by their hands with some strange device.

As Lauren and Andy's hands were linked, there emerged a bright light which grew in intensity. Holding up their free hands, the Strucker siblings issued forth a blast of energy that was hotter than the sun, vaporising everything in contact with them. When it was over, the building they were standing in had completely vanished, replaced by a field of scorched earth. Their pursuers inside the building had been wiped out of existence. Ash fell all around them.

Lauren turned to him. "We need to go," she told Andy as she struggled to hold back her tears. Andy's heart felt like granite. This was the first time they killed someone. They turned on their heels and ran in the direction of the other mutant evacuees.

More strange and painful memories flashed by as Andy recalled more of his past experiences. 

He recalled his mother and father, Caitlin and Reed Strucker, and his sense of betraying them. He remembered Lorna, Marcos, Jon and Clarice of the Mutant Underground. He remembered Grandma Ellen, Uncle Dan and Scott his cousin. Remembered the Hellfire Club. Reeva Payge and Sophie, Phoebe and Esme Frost. And of the Frosts, he recalled all the times they used and manipulated him.

And Andy remembered the horrific visions of the Von Strucker twins. Andreas Von Strucker and his twisted relationship with his sister Andrea

Andy now felt that he was better off for not remembering any of that.  
\----------

Lauren was no longer strapped to a gurney. She was walking through the halls of her old high school. She saw herself walking arm-in-arm with Jack Kramer, her old boyfriend before she and Andy were outed as mutants. She recalled he instagram photo of himself and his new girlfriend standing outside the Strucker home, grinning in front of the graffiti slogans of "beware of the muties". 

She walked through the hallways of Bell Vue Senior High School, the ghosts of the past oblivious to her presence. Lauren spotted her brother in the locker room. The tall, muscular Trevor Maxwell had his hands on Andy's shirt, muttering something foul and obscene at him. Lauren's heart sank in her chest upon seeing that. Several of Trevor's friend's stood behind Andy, smirking among themselves. They finally left her little brother alone, but Trevor's girlfriend, reached out and squeezed Andy's butt when Trevor was not looking. Lauren felt a surge of anger when she saw that.

Lauren saw Andy look dejected and humiliated. It deeply affected her.

The scenery around Lauren changed again. She saw her father, Reed Strucker, standing in a hospital. He looked much younger than she remembered, but she recognised him anywhere. He was holding a tiny girl of about two years of age in his arms. There was a tremor that shook the building. Panicked shouts reverberated through the corridors. Reed started running through the corridors looking for the ward where Caitlin, his wife, was in labour with their second child.

The little girl in Reed's arms, terrified by the quakes, started crying.

"Shh, Daddy's here, honey!" Reed soothed his daughter. Younger Lauren sobbed as she buried her face into her father's shoulder.

Lauren followed them to the maternity ward. A nurse told Reed that Caitlin was experiencing some complications with the birth and that they needed to perform a Caesarean section.

"Where the hell are these earthquakes coming from?" Reed asked irritably.

"Sir, your guess is as good as ours," the nurse replied. "If it continues, we may have to do the procedure outside."

And so there was an emergency evacuation of the earthquake-wracked hospital, with Caitlin Strucker being wheeled outdoors on a hot and humid summers day. Tents were hastily erected for patients. After several hours, an anesthesia-blocked Caitlin had the C-section performed on her. The tremors slowed to a halt by the time her son was born.

Lauren then knew that the Andy's ability had been present since birth. It manifested during that night in the school. It was unleashed during a moment of extreme stress. Childbirth is inevitably very stressful for mother and child. The Strucker mutation was a gift and a curse. Lauren now realised that it had been afflicting her little brother his entire life. It festered inside Andy, adding to his rage and depression.  
\------------

Andy stood on a beach, the waves lapping toward the shore. He gazed out into the roiling ocean. It roared furiously before him, as if reaching out desperately and failing to get Andy. He was tempted to just race in and embrace the waves of his rage.

"Andy!" A girl's voice came from behind him. He turned to see Lauren. She looked sorrowfully at him. There was remorse in her eyes. Her tears glistened and spilled down the girl's cheeks. 

"I'm sorry," she gasped. 

Andy gazed at her for a long time. He glanced toward the vengeful sea behind him. Then turned back to his sister, stepped forward and took her in a fierce embrace.

"I'm sorry," Lauren cried hoarsely. "For the lies, for ignoring you. For everything!"

Andy did not care. He buried his face in Lauren's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he whispered back with his sobbing breath. "I'm sorry for leaving you..." He broke down as he spoke. 

Lauren kissed him on the forehead. "Don't be!" She whispered fiercely. "I should have been there for you all those times. They hurt you, and I did nothing. When you were fighting for us, I tried to stop you. We'll get out of this. We will!" She held Andy tight. 

Andy collapsed onto he sand. Lauren cradled his head and gazed sadly ahead of her.   
\------------

In the real world, scientists with AnthropCorps entered the chamber where the Strucker's were held. They shaved Andy's head before they could prepare for surgery.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Andy is about to undergo neural surgery by the AnthropCorps.

The Strucker siblings lay on the beach inside the dreamscape of their joint psyches.

"I should have told you everything," Lauren confessed. "I didn't want us to be on opposite sides, didn't want to lose you again."

Andy just looked up at the sky. The sea was still tempestuous. But he did not want to be ruled by his temper. "I'm sorry, too." He told his older sister. "I wanted to fight for us. Protect all of us. I wanted to believe the Frost triplets. I wanted to think our great-grandfather.." Andy's voice tailed off briefly. "...Wanted to believe that they were just lying about those things about him. I wish I never found out those things about them!" Andy shuddered.

Lauren glanced at her brother. "What did you find out?" She asked in a concerned voice.

Andy sighed. "You don't want to know. Trust me!"

Lauren shrugged. "Well, we were worried about you when you were gone. It just wasn't the same without you with us. Every night, at dinner, one of us would leave a plate out for you. Just out of habit, you know?" Lauren smiled. "Before long, it was like some, I don't know, a fucked up ritual." 

She went quiet for a long time. "I saw how those kids treated you."

Andy turned his head on the sand to gaze at her. Lauren regarded him in turn. "I saw what Trevor was doing to you. I didn't tell Mom and Dad because I didn't think you'd want me to. But I was also scared of him too. And I didn't want to be outed as a mutant. I was too scared to act and scared not too. You were my brother, and I couldn't even help you, I'm so sorry!" Tears spilled hotly down Lauren's face.

Andy looked up at the sky again. "All those people I killed." He whispered despondently.

Lauren shook her head vigorously. "Don't.." She started saying.

"I killed a lot of people. And the worse part is I enjoyed it!" Andy's eyes welled up. "However fucking bad they were, they're part of who I am now. I see their faces every time I close my eyes. I killed them, and I would even do it again." He looked at Lauren with such fierceness. "How can any of you say you want me back?" Andy asked harshly.

Lauren was just as fierce. "It doesn't matter, Andy! These same people would have killed us in a heartbeat. We both know it! We want you back with your family, where you belong. And that's all there is to it."

"I'm a killer!" Andy declared through sobbing breath. "I shouldn't be around anyone!"

Lauren reached for his hand. "You're not as bad as you think you are. You never were!"  
\------------

Lauren awoke in darkness to the sound of metal fragments being dropped into a bowl. Her blindfold was still on over her eyes.

"She's awake." A woman's voice stated out loud.

"I doesn't matter," a man's voice replied. "With her blindfold, she won't get to see what's happening to her brother."

"What's going on?" Lauren shouted with barely-concealed fearfulness. 

The man's voice laughed. "Something that you don't wanna see," he teased.

"Winston," the female voice chided. "Don't mess with her head. "We're going to cut into your brother's skull and perform a little surgery, sweetie!" 

Lauren gasped. "No," she said in a small petrified voice.

The man called Winston laughed. "Beatrice, your bedside manner is just the worst.

It was Beatrice's turn to laugh. "Oh right, Dr Winston Jeong: the King of the Bedside Manner!

"You know, I had this little fucker at the Trask lab in New York months ago. "I had no idea at the time he was a Von Strucker. Made an absolute mess of the place. It was him who destroyed that office block that same day." Winston Jeong chuckled. He patted the unconscious Andy on the cheek. "You're fucking mine now, boy! Bet you didn't see that happening?!"

Lauren was creeped out by their flippancy about cutting up Andy. "Fucking leave my brother alone!" She snapped furiously.

Footsteps approached her, making Lauren recoil in fear. The blindfold was ripped from her face. "She looked up at a bespectabled forty-something year old woman with brightly-dyed red hair, who looked down on the girl with contempt in her eyes. 

"Well guess what, you mutie-twat?" The woman whose name on her tag was Dr Beatrice Mankeiwicz spat at Lauren. "Maybe you WILL get to see what we do to your little shit brother! After that, we'll get started on you!" She leered at Lauren as the girl started sobbing.

Winston Jeong, the smug, short-statured Asian scientist grinned as he stood over Andy with a surgical saw in his hand. "If you think the Hound Program was fun, guess what we have in store for you guys?!" He smiled as he pulled on his goggles.

Lauren started shaking and took quick breaths. She leaned back on her gurney and closed her eyes. "I know you can hear me," she whispered. This caught the attention of the two scientists. "I know you're in there, and you need to fight, okay?! Andy you need to fight. You need to wake up and fight these fuckers. Andy!" Lauren shouted frantically. She shook beneath her restraints.

"What?" Beatrice Mankeiwicz asked incredulously. "Who the fuck are you talking to?"

Winston Jeong switched off the electric saw. "Hey, you don't think that Von Strucker's might have some latent telepathy?"

Mankeiwicz shrugged. "Whatever, Winston! Let's just get this over with. I'm hungry."

Jeong grinned. "Yeah, me too!" He switched the saw back on and brought it down on Andy's skull.

"Andy!" Lauren screamed at the top of her lungs.

An irritated Mankeiwicz delivered a stinging slap to Lauren's face. "Shut your mouth, bitch!" She snapped.

"Fuck you!" Lauren screamed defiantly. 

Mankeiwicz grabbed Lauren's soft throat with strong fingers and produced a ball point pen. "Well, I suppose you won't be needing your eyes after the operation," she told the girl menacingly. 

Lauren closed her eyes tightly, bracing herself for the worse.

Grinning at the spectacle before him, Jeong turned back to the surgery and brought the spinning saw-blade on to Andy's bald scalp, sending a small spray of blood. But then, his hand shook. Jeong looked up and saw that the whole room was trembling. Cracks started spreading through the walls.

Jeong looked from the walls to Andy. "Beatrice, increase that fucking dosage..."

But before he could finish his sentence, the walls exploded outward. Some mysterious force suddenly picked up Jeong and flung him across the wall. The saw in his hand was still spinning as it brushed against Beatrice Mankeiwicz, slicing her jugular open. 

Blood sprayed on to Lauren's face as Mankeiwicz tried to staunch her wound. The haemorrhaging scientist sank to her knees next to Lauren's gurney.

Dr Winston Jeong landed with bone crunching force on the sundering floor. He cried out as he broke his back.

The klaxon sounded from somewhere within the facility, due to the sudden earthquake.

Lauren saw the ceiling caving in and was about to collapse on top of them. Despite the pain-collar around her neck, she focused herself and hardened the air about her, shielding herself from the falling masonry. A piece of rubble dropped down and crushed the screaming Jeong's skull on impact.

Andy's eyes shot open. The falling masonry seemed to avoid his person. The boy turned his head to gaze at Lauren. At once, his straps and handcuffs dissolved and he rose from the gurney. He stood over his bound sister, forcing the collapsing masonry to avoid them both. Lauren instinctively dropped her protective shield.

With a flick of his wrist, Andy shattered the metal cuffs and leather straps binding Lauren to the gurney. He pulled her up and she tearfully fell into her brother's embrace.

"Let's go!" Andy told her confidently.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lauren and Andy Strucker must fight the personnel of AnthropCorps and escape from Guam.

The security klaxon alerted the AC soldiers on the base, who were now seeing the crumbling of the research complex, where mutant specimens were studied and vivisected. From out of the growing cloud of concrete dust emerged two very young-looking, under dressed mutants; the two whom were earlier brought on to the base on stretchers.

An officer shouted the order to fire on the mutants. Bullets flew at the mutant pair. One of them, a pretty blonde, raised her hand, causing the air itself to harden and form a protective barrier which protected herself and her companion.

The other, a slim adolescent with piercing eyes and a shaven head which was bleeding from the scalp, waved his hand and caused the tarmac to sunder underfoot, which quickly spread towards the troops, causing some of them to collapse through the opening chasm.

The girl caused another hardening of the air to the left hand side of the AC troops, and swung it at them like a giant hammer course from the sky, knocking many of them down.

The boy sent powerful, concentrated shock waves that hurled more troops backward, slamming them into vehicles.

The girl formed a new barrier, which arose in a diagonal fashion like a ramp. Holding it in place with her outstretched hands, she nodded her head to the boy for them to step upon it. The mutants ran upon the air-barrier. The soles of the bare feet visible to the wounded soldiers below.

As he ran, the boy summoned another shock wave, which blasted a hole through the concrete wall which led to the internment camp, where captive mutants were held. As they reached the other side. The boy then summoned a pair of fireballs and launched them toward the parked vehicles, the explosion being used to cover their disappearance.  
\------

Lauren and Andy rushed through the camp. Andy burst open every door to every prefab cabin where mutants were held. Lauren used her tricks to rip off the shock collars by hardening the air between the collar and the soft throats of the mutants before pulling it apart.

Andy used his powers to cause sections of the internment camp's walls to collapse. After achieving this, he turned back to where dozens of AC soldiers were flooding into the adjacent camp. Andy captured the hydrogen molecules from the air before coalescing them into a huge fireball, which he then released into their ranks, incinerating them. 

Several soldiers fired at Andy. Lauren saw the shot fired, but before she could protect her exposed brother, Andy surprised her by causing the air about him to shimmer, which caused the bullets speeding through to dissolve in mid-flight. Lauren grinned as much in amazement as relief that her younger sibling could protect himself. She then sent her shields pounding into the soldiers who just tried to kill her brother.

Most of the mutants turned towards the gaps in the wall created by Andy and fled to freedom. Some, however, turned launched themselves at the AC guards. One mutant, a middle-aged dreadlocked black hippy caused the skin of several guards to freeze into ice. Another, a gigantic bald-headed, muscular amazonian female tore into a squad of AC's and physically threw them about like sacks of potatoes. Bullet tore into her body. She continued valiantly until the last bullet penetrated through her right eye and ended her struggle forever. A super-fast young man athletically whirled about, back-flipped and and kicked about a number of soldiers.

"Go on, get the fuck out of here!" Andy screamed at the combative mutants.

"Y'all gotta go!" Lauren shrieked at them. But it was no good. Not all superpowers protected against bullets, bayonet-thrusts and grenades.

Lauren grabbed Andy's arm. "Come on, we can't help everyone," she cried out. The siblings ran for the sundered exits, but as they stepped outside, soldiers from the United States Marine Corps had swooped in to assist AnthropCorps. They were indiscriminately gunning down many of the fleeing mutants.

Andy turned to see a platoon of marines fleeing towards them, cutting off their escape. He pointed at them. "We gotta go back," he shout to Lauren.

As they turned back, Lauren hastily threw up a shield to cover them against the ragged volley of marine gunshots.

The Struckers weaved between the cabins as they raced back to the central area of the main AnthropCorps compound. Again, Lauren threw up the huge ramp which allowed her and Andy to bypass walls and buildings. She kept her hands aimed firmly down on the thin air to generate a temporary surface. But maintain the barrier was physically taxing for the girl. She had to take herself and her brother to the roof of a barracks.

From the south, a helicopter gunship spotted the pair flew towards them. Andy narrowed his eyes as he summoned a fireball, then launched it at the chopper. It burst through the windshields, then exploded the vehicle in mid-flight. Burning wreckage crashed to the ground.

A doorway to the roof opened and a platoon of AC soldiers, filed out and trained their weapons on the Struckers.

Lauren and Andy glanced at each other and immediately held hands. Pressing the flesh of their palms together, the air itself shimmered around them, and a fierce heat spread itself from their joined hands and through their bodies.

The individual minds of the two siblings merged to temporarily form an ancient intelligence that has across generations, its apparent reason to be having but one purpose: to destroy everything in its path!

Before shots could be fired from rifles of the AnthropCorps, Fenris flashed brightly and surged itself above the roof, vaporising the soldiers and spreading like wildfire across the entire base. Like a nuclear explosion without the radioactive fallout, Fenris atomised every structure, every vehicle and every flesh-and-bone creature present.

When its wrath was sated. Two hands parted, and Fenris once more ceased to exist. One mind became two once more. And those two restored minds beheld the massive scorched landscape before them. Ash flew about them.  
\--------------

Lauren and Andy walked up the isolated roadway on the island. They remained alert for more soldiers from the island's military base who would no doubt be on high alert for over a hundred absconding mutants.

Neither of the siblings spoke. Neither of them knew how many people died from Fenris, but talking about it would be a waste of energy. They had to find a quiet place to hunker down and stay out of sight.

Within moments, and a quarter-of-a-mile from the AnthropCorps base, several trucks full of marines quickly drove toward the siblings.

Andy looked at his drained sister. Lauren was visibly exhausted. 

"Hold on to me," muttered Andy.

Lauren blinked. "What?" 

Andy threw his arm around Lauren's waist. With his other hand, Andy blasted the ground with a concentrated shock wave. The downward impact threw the siblings a hundred feet into the air.

Lauren screamed in fear. "Andy, what the fuck?!" She felt her heart was leaping out of her chest.

Andy delivered another blast behind him, correcting his course to get further from the assembled lorries. "We just need to land a short way away before making a run for it!" The boy shouted.

"What?" Lauren was confused.

"Trust me, I've done this before."

Instinctively, Lauren clasped her brother by the hand. She was convinced that she might die. But their hands glowed once more, and Fenris was reborn a second time. A bright light glowed and spread through Andy and Lauren. But this time, instead of engulfing before it, it caused the siblings to vanish in a flash.

The marines spilling from the trucks on the road below them gazed up, having just shielded their eyes from the bright flash. Their mutant quarry had gone.  
\----------

Fenris sent it's hosts, the Strucker siblings coursing through the sky faster than the speed of sound. It sped ceaselessly through the clouds for a time before it hurtled toward an island chain, some two thousand miles from their initial location. 

Two bodies splashed into the sea a couple of hundred yards offshore from the nearest island.

Lurching from below the water's surface, Andy grabbed his sister around the waist and swam with her in tow. She was still drained from over-use of her powers when she had to form those overhead bridges. 

Andy took his sister to the shore and lay beside her to catch their breath.

"What..the fuck...did we...just do?!" Lauren gasped between breaths.

Andy was staring at the clouds forming in the sky above them. "I only intended to leap a distance. I learned it back in D.C. with Hellfire." The boy sighed. "But that....? That wasn't even in the literature about the Von Struckers!"

Lauren started grinning. "That was the coolest thing ever!" She declared in a half-whisper. "I can't believe we just did that."

Andy glanced at Lauren. "We REALLY have to do that again!" His voice could barely contain his excitement.

Lauren beamed at her brother. "We gotta do that again," she declared in firm agreement. "But let's give it a day, yeah?" She clutched Andy's hand. "It's going to take them forever to find us."

Andy reciprocated his sister's smile. "Yeah," he said gently. "Give it a day."

Lauren then peered above Andy's head and saw the wound had all but healed. "You're not bleeding," she told him. 

Andy felt the top of his shaven head. "Fenris?" The boy wondered aloud, thinking that it may have healed him while he and Lauren were joined. 

His sister giggled. "Jesus! We're full of surprises today."

The siblings laughed together. Andy lifted himself off the ground before helping up his elder sibling. "We need to get some shelter," he told her. "It looks like we're in for some rain."

Nodding at Andy's sagacity, Lauren allowed her brother to lead her deeper into the trees. It was unlikely that AnthropCorps or the Marine Corps would find them out here, but they needed to move on soon. 

It felt good, Lauren thought, to have herself and Andy on the same page.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With their newfound ability to fly, Lauren and Andy are determined to find their way home.

Fenris seared through the clouds for hundreds of kilometres. But its periods of existence had always been measured in minutes. It was a fleeting flash of light in the eyes of everything which bore witness to it. It burned energy on it's course above the Earth before its inevitable end. As its time neared, it dipped below the clouds and toward a stretch of water among a close-packed archipelago in the middle of an ocean. It flew close enough to one of the islands. Fenris' current hosts were very young; inexperienced in the use of its raw power and would have to learn of its sophistication without the aid of elders.

Fenris finally burned out before Lauren and Andy Strucker, still holding each other's hands, splashed into the surface of the Pacific ocean.

Two bodies sank beneath the sea and beheld the vibrant corals and fish that made up the ocean floor.

Lauren wrapped her arms around her brother's shoulders so he could share her small air bubble. Andy grinned as he swam to the corals with Lauren in tow. They floated through schools of multicoloured fish as they darted about.

It was like an adventure of their dreams. They were like small children again as they explored the ocean floor, investigating different specimens of fish, crustaceans and coral plants.

Soon, a large Tiger shark swam through the current and picked up the strange scent of potential prey. When it spotted them, the shark sped toward them, Lauren glanced up and created a larger secondary shield. She tapped Andy on the shoulder, who looked up to see a large shark darting towards the siblings. It bit on Lauren's imperceivable shield. It continuously swam away before launching another assault. Finally, Andy punished the Tiger shark by battering it with his shock waves. Finally, the shark gave up on its quarry and left the pair for easier prey. Unperturbed, Lauren and Andy hunted for prey of their own; they were hungry.

The Struckers eventually waded a shore. Andy had caught a salmon. The siblings collected branches before Andy produced a small fireball to lit it. They cooked fish upon a lump of rock. After they ate, the siblings lay on the sand and gazed out at the rolling waves.

"How far are we from the west coast?" Andy wondered. 

Lauren shrugged. "It'd be great if we could reach Hawaii. Maybe we could get a plane home?"

Andy chuckled. "Yeah, we can fly first class, for sure!"

Lauren smiled. "Get new clothes from Sears."

"Buy some lakefront property!" Andy continued the jest.

"We can go anywhere we want." Lauren said in wonderment. "Anywhere!"

Andy sighed. "No more hiding!" He said longingly.

Lauren grasped her younger sibling's hand and looked him in the eye pleadingly. "Come home with me." She whispered sadly. "Please!"

Looking between his sister and sea, Andy looked conflicted. "I can't," he said finally.

Lauren tightened her grip on his hand. "But why not?"

"I'll just fuck things up again," he answered bitterly. "I'm too dangerous to be around anyone else. And I've killed people. More than I can remember. Even back there at that base."

Lauren blinked back her tears. "No one thinks that about you," she tried to persuade him.

Andy pulled his hand from Lauren's grip and stood up. "I can't go back with you," he insisted. He stalked off toward the treeline.

Lauren pushed herself off the sand, caught up with her brother. She reached for his forearm. "Andy will you stop." She stepped in front of him. "What are you gonna do out there on your own?" She chided her brother. "Be just another fugitive? You're sixteen, you should be with us, your family." 

"And also the number one most wanted mutant in America!" Andy snapped at her. "Anyone with me is going to be in the firing line."

"Do you expect us just to let you go and see if you sink or swim out there?" Lauren countered. "I'm never going to let you fight it out alone, and you're definitely not leaving this island without me, so you might as well accept it!"

Andy rolled his eyes. "Just leave me alone," he told his sister in frustration. But Lauren barred his path.

"No!" She said firmly. "You're my brother. We're family. I'm responsible for you. Mom and Dad love you and want you back. And so do I!" Lauren grabbed Andy's arms. "You're not a bad person, Andy, and I'm sorry that I ever made you feel like you were." Tears rolled down her face. "Those times you were trying to help us, protecting us....I should have been more understanding back then. It wasn't until you were leaving with Polaris and Esme that I realised that how I treated you. Those times I talked down to you, made you feel useless when I should have been helping..."

Lauren broke down in tears. Andy leaned down and hugged his sister. "I forgive you," he said into her ear. "But I still can't go back with you!"

She cried into Andy's bare shoulder. She wept like a child. "Just...," Lauren sniffed, "just..come back with me, Andy! Come back to us. You belong with us. We'll never be dismissive with you again. Just come back to us!"

"Lauren, stop will you?" Andy begged. 

Lauren hugged him harder. "Please tell me you're coming back." She begged in return.

"I can't!" The boy furiously shook his head. 

"Andy, please.."

"No!" He said in a trembling voice.

"You're a good person. I know you are! You always have been."

Andy tried to hold himself together. The boy pulled himself out of his sister's embrace. "Enough!" He shouted. "You know nothing about me!" Do you know how many died because of me? How many I will probably will kill?" Andy's voice shook with emotion.

But Lauren reached out and grabbed his hand again. "You're wrong!" She told him as levelly as she could. "I've known you all you're life. You're so sweet, no matter how hard you try to hide it." Lauren managed to smile. "All those times you've pretended to forget my birthday, then hide my gifts in my room? Sorry, you're fooling anyone!" Lauren paused, laughing at the memory. "Just like how you pretend you're not smart, when we've all known about it forever. You were reading since you were three years old. None of us had forgotten about that."

Andy eyes started glistening. He staggered a tree behind him. "Just stop," he muttered weakly.

But Lauren continued. "Also the strongest of us. Stronger than you even know. Even that first chance we had to use Fenris, it was you who ended before those people died. And you took it hard when they killed Dreamer at Trask. Just like those Hounds we had to kill. I know it bothered you like it bothered me."

Andy was slumped against the tree. He was taking breaths. "I love you," Lauren went on, "BECAUSE of all these things! I you for wanting to protect us all. I want to protect you, too. Even from yourself. I just want my baby brother back! I want you to come back."

Andy's chest heaved, and then he started sobbing. "I can't come back..."

"Yes you can!" Lauren gathered Andy in an embrace and cradled his head. "You are coming back to us. And Mom and Dad are going to see you again." Lauren laid a kiss on Andy's shaved head.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Struckers return to civilisation in Hawaii.

The more Fenris was restored to existence, the more it recalled its past. Memories stretching many centuries in the past. Long before its revival by those mischievous twins whom frequently appropriated its power every chance they got, delighting the ancient spirit with untold acts of destruction against those civilisation-building insects.

This current generation using their hereditary gifts to soar through the sky above the oceans, they had no idea of the joys which lay ahead of them. Fenris so loved it's children; multiple generations of them.

Fenris flew above a large island within an archipelago. It was burning energy fast, and it needed to land its hosts safely, as they were the last of their line. Fenris thought that they were both young, healthy specimens and it was time they reproduced.

Fenris formed a large barrier from millions of oxygen molecules, which ensured a soft landing for its sweet little darling children. Fenris impacted into an isolated stretch of coastline. The old spirit faded out of existence the second that two hands unclasped.

Lauren and Andy awoke from the strange waking dream as Fenris. They recalled the extent of the island and the bird's-eye-view of urban sprawl and roads. The siblings walked up the slopes, past the treeline and stepped on the edge of a road. Andy spotted a sign twenty yards away. 

"Two miles to Honolulu," Andy read out loud with pleasure in his voice.

Lauren clamped a hand on his shoulder. "We made it!" She gasped happily. "We're in Hawaii." She pulled Andy into an embrace and the siblings danced in a small circle on the hot tarmac before stepping back on the grass.

The two agreed to walk alongside the roadway.  
\----------

The Struckers had landed on the isle of Oahu, the third largest island in Hawaii.

"We have to make one more flight from here before we're at the west coast," Andy stated as he and his sister were dipping their feet in a low tide pool at the beach.

"It'll be a long one, though." Lauren ventured.

Andy lay back on the sand and put his hands behind his head. "Worth it," he muttered as he closed his eyes.

Lauren smiled. "I'll miss this though," she said wistfully.

Andy frowned. "We haven't been here a day."

Lauren shook her head. "You know what I mean, Andy! I mean us; being out here. I never imagined us ever doing this in my wildest dreams."

Her brother looked up at her oddly. "You dreamed about US?" 

She glanced a Andy. "Umm, yeah. Why?"

Andy cast his eyes back up at the darkening sky. "No reason."

Lauren lay on the sand next to her brother. "Yeah, I dreamed about us adventuring since we were little." She told him earnestly. "I'm not ashamed about that. There aren't many others I'd rather have with me!" Lauren smiled.

"I just thought..." started Andy before he stopped himself. "Nah, forget about it!"

"What?!" Lauren probed him.

Andy gave in. "I thought you'd take your boyfriend or whatever with you to other places." 

Lauren lay on her side, looking on her brother. "As I said, I'm not ashamed, okay? Stop making it weird." 

As Andy drifted off to sleep, Lauren leaned on her arm next to her brother and gazed at him. She started stroking the healing scar on top of Andy's shaven head. Lauren felt a surge of guilt because of it.  
\-------------

Lauren recalled the flight to Guam. Andy was unconscious on the gurney in an induced coma. Her brother had several tranquiliser darts in him when he was captured. By the time Lauren had caught up with him, the AnthropCorps soldiers forced the girl to give herself up before they shot her unconscious brother in the head. Lauren allowed herself to be collared and taken.

On the plane ride to Guam had Lauren on edge. She cried seeing Andy rigged to feeding tubes and chained to a bed like that: it was inhuman.

Lauren knew the effort would be painful for her, but used her power to create a sheet of sorts between the soft flesh of her throat and the X-gene inhibitor collar. She forced it to grow in proportion and extend it outward. Lauren was choking herself, but forced the sheet to thicken until it snapped the inhibitor-collar from her neck. 

Lauren gasped for air and messaged her throat. She was still handcuffed to her seat, but from across the bay, she was able to use her shielding ability to knocking down the apparatus, and yanking out the feeding tubes. It would be a while before Andy awoke.

Knowing she had very little time left, Lauren hardened the air against and used it to try and remove her handcuffs like she did with the inhibitor. But the noise she was making had attracted one of the AnthropCorps soldiers into the passenger bay. 

The soldier scowled at the mutant girl as he raised his sidearm. "We have another collar for you, mutie-bitch!"

Defiantly, Lauren cloaked herself with the air molecules.

Smirking, the soldier then aimed his desert eagle at Andy's head.

Partially through fear and partially from rage, Lauren shoved the dense cluster of air molecules at the soldier. The jolt caught him by surprise. In reaction, the guard pulled the trigger and the bullet flew out of the barrel.

"Noooo!" Lauren wailed.

Guard landed against the wall, but he smirked. "We've armoured the plane's inside!" He laughed cruelly. He raised his weapon again at Lauren. "I suppose thos eggheads are gonna have to be disappointed with this delivery.

But Lauren was barely hearing the man. She was crying and screaming. "MY BROTHER! YOU FUCKING KILLED HIM! YOU KILLED HIM...!" She kept screaming.

"And you're dead, too. Mutie-twat.." The shouting was cut short when he noticed from the corner of his eye that Andy had raised his head before dropping it back on the bed. The boy, who was bleeding from the scalp from the bullet wound which had mostly strafed across Andy's skull before before break apart and being half-buried inside the bone-tissue, was shaking convulsively on the gurney.

Lauren then noticed that the aeroplane was shaking with a tremor. What relief she felt of seeing Andy alive was quickly replaced by the horror that she knew was coming.

"Oh shit!" Lauren whispered.

The aeroplane was torn open at the midsection. The soldier was sucked of the plane and was sucked into turbines on one of the wings. The cruel AnthropCorps serviceman screamed in terror before the blades sliced him to bloody chunks. The grenades tied to the soldier's belt exploded and tore off the wing. The aeroplane nosedived below the clouds. 

Lauren was herself sucked out by the decompression. She was flipped from her chair and would have been sucked into the other wing turbine if she had not shield herself in time. The fast-rotating turbines to the seat apart, which broke Lauren free. She then fell towards the ocean below. 

Lauren screamed as she fell, but she had the presence of mind to extend the shield around her to soften the impact she knew would come. She landed into the ocean with a huge splash.

When she resurfaced, Lauren glanced up to see the aeroplane scream as it span toward the ocean. It crashed into the waves.

"Oh my god, Andy!" Sobbed Lauren. Wasting no time, the girl swam through the vast expanse of sea to locate her brother in the crash.  
\-----------

By the following day, Lauren and Andy were walking through the city of Honolulu. Barefoot and half-naked though they were, the siblings walked the length of the city, ignoring everyone around them. they walked through high streets, shopping malls and through parks. There were enough hippies and beach bumbs, many of them tourists in Honolulu. Two blond-haired teens would hardly stand out among the crowd.

"We were here once before," Lauren told her brother.

"We were?" Andy was mildly surprised. 

"Yeah. I mean, you were about three, I think. I had just turned five. Mom and Dad brought us here on vacation. I remember Mom saying to me years later that she and Dad actually considered moving here permanently." Lauren shrugged. "If only, right?!"

"I know we've been to Hawaii before," said Andy. "I just didn't know where in Hawai we were."

Lauren smiled. "Yeah, a bunch of tropical beaches and everything. You see one, you've seen them all."

Andy shrugged in turn. "It wouldn't have changed who we are, though." He said sadly. "Anti-mutant laws are the same everywhere, even in this place."

"Yeah," Lauren said again. "We'd still be the same wherever we go."

"Except here," Andy added in jest, "there would have been a tsunami in the aftermath of my earthquakes."

Lauren nudged him. "Jesus, Andy, don't be so morbid." But she smiled all the same, and wrapped her arms around Andy. Her brother reciprocated her wrapping his arm around her shoulders. Lauren happily leaned against Andy's chest.

By the end of the day, the siblings had their fill with sight-seeing. They came to an isolated spot on the edge of the city. After gazing out to see the ocean from the top of a hill, the Struckers stood up and wrapped their arms around each other.

"Ready?" Andy asked his sister.

Lauren smiled up at him. "Do it!" She hugged her arms tighter around him.

Andy extended out his arms. Pointing his palms downward, Andy pushed down, hard and fast, on the earth with his shock wave. With Lauren in tow, Andy shot up like a rocket. Quickly, he grabbed Lauren's hand. They visibly glowed with the power of Fenris before they shot eastward faster than sound. Their journey would take the siblings more than two thousand miles.

Lauren and Andy were going home.


	10. Chapter 10

Fenris screamed through the heavens across an open ocean. It was a loving bearer of its children; they were together hand-in-hand, seeing through each other's eyes and experience each other's memories. 

The girl called Lauren felt her brother's reserves of rage and remorse. She felt all the kicks, punches, slaps and humiliations he had been through. She experienced his sense of betrayal and his wellspring of pain. What she would give to heal him.

The boy called Andy felt her sense of urgency in reuniting him with his family. He knew the pain of her perceived failure from his departure and her sense of hollowness in his absence. The guilt of it could fill the sky they were flying through. But her boundless love for him that he felt through the connection of Fenris was like a warm, soothing balm.

Fenris soared above a city and a large, ruddy-coloured bridge. Fenris, with increasing precision, landed the Struckers on top of a tower block. 

The wind blew fiercely around the siblings. Andy, still bare-chested and barefoot shivered slightly as he looked about him. 

"San Francisco!" The boy stated simply.

"Yeah," Lauren murmured. She was dressed only in her undergarments. "I think we should have got some clothes back in Honolulu."

Andy smiled. "Sure," he chuckled. "It was hot as hell, though."

"Not here it isn't, though." Lauren frowned as she looked up at the darkening clouds in the sky. "Looks like it might rain here. Great!" She moaned.

Andy grinned again. "Fortunately for us both, I actually know this place."

Lauren glanced at her brother. "You've been here before?"

"There's an HC safehouse in this very street." Andy said happily. "In fact; where standing on it!"

Lauren looked between Andy and the roof of the building they were on. Both the siblings laughed.

Andy led his sister inside the luxuriously-furnished and spacious, secret safehouse and showed her the rooms which were the designated living quarters for members of the Hellfire Club. They showered and dressed in separate quarters. Lauren helped herself in a dark blue silken bed robe while Andy wore beach shorts and a camo-coloured sleeveless vest. 

Later, the siblings lay on the couch watching the TV in the common room. They were watching a nature show. Andy lay back on the cushions with a pencil and sketch pad in his hands. Lauren was curled up on the couch close to her brother. Andy noticed that she was compulsively staying close to him, as if she was afraid he would walk out any minute.

Part of Andy wanted to do just that.  


Lauren made a quick call to her father, Reed Strucker. She gave him the address and city they were in. "Andy's with me," she told her father. "He's had a trying time, but he's okay. We need you guys here. "I don' know if I can make him stay put, Dad."

"Okay, Sweetie," Reed replied over the phone. "It could take us a couple of days. though. Just keep me posted, okay!"

Lauren smiled, though her eyes stung with tears. "Yeah, I will. Just hurry over. "I love you, Dad."

Reed told his daughter to hang tight before hanging up the phone.

Later, the siblings lay on the couch watching the TV in the common room. They were watching a nature show. Andy lay back on the cushions with a pencil and sketch pad in his hands. Lauren was curled up on the couch close to her brother. Andy noticed that she was compulsively staying close to him, as if she was afraid he would walk out any minute.

Part of Andy wanted to do just that. After everything that has happened between them, Andy did not think they would ever be able to be a family like they once were. Andy did not even feel like the same person he was more than a year and a half earlier.

And yet, Lauren was sticking to Andy like wet on water. Here she was, on the same couch, side-by-side like a child afraid of being on her own. Andy tolerated it for her sake, but inwardly it was freaking him out.

Lauren turned her face to Andy's sketching. "What is that?"

Andy held it out into view. "Where we've been to." He said simply. It was the ocean floor that he drawn from memory. Among the pencil-drawn corals and marine life were what appeared to be the broken wreckage of the aeroplane.

Lauren smiled, wishing that she could had Andy's artistic talents. "It's a little creepy." She told him in an apologetic tone.

Andy shrugged. "I've got creepy shit in my head. I have to let it out somehow."

Lauren gazed at Andy for a long second before she leaned in and kissed her brother on the cheek.

Andy smiled. "The hell was that for?" 

Lauren shrugged in turn. "I love you. Weird boy that you are!"

Andy half-smirked, half-blushed in response. "Whatever, dude...you're fucking weird!" Was all he could manage.

Lauren, grinning, pinched Andy's cheeks teasingly. "Oooooh, ain't he precious!"

"Enough!" Andy laughed at her. But Lauren just dragged him into an embrace, which Andy resigned himself to.

After a while of sitting in silence, Lauren started to broach the subject with Andy. "I've talked to Dad earlier. Just after we got here. Told him where we are."

Andy did not react to her words. He did not look at Lauren. But she persisted anyway. "Andy!" She continued in a firmer voice. "Please tell me you're gonna stay with us!"

But Andy kept his eyes firmly on the TV and remained silent.

"Andy," Lauren whispered. "Just tell me you're staying with us!"

Andy sighed. "Lauren, can we not..."

"Please, promise me you'll stay till the others show up." Lauren urged her brother.

He pulled himself from Lauren's embrace. She got up from the couch and followed Andy down the hallway. "You can't keep running from us," Lauren told her brother reproachfully.

"I can't stay with you guy's, either!" Andy snapped.

"Why the hell not?" 

"You KNOW why!"

Lauren furiously followed Andy into the kitchen.

"Okay, Andy, you feel terrible for all the things you did in the Inner Circle. But it's fucking over now. They're finished."

Andy reached for a soda from the fridge. "Oh really?!" Came his exasperated reply. "I was part of it all! Anyone else would be wanting my head for what I did. You saw what I did when I was with them. Remember at the mental hospital in Bethesda I threw you and Marcos back fifty yards? I didn't think I would throw you that far, but it still happened. I'm the worst case scenario of a fucking bull in a china shop. I'm just too dangerous to be around other people." 

Andy was close to hyperventilating. Lauren moved forward to calm him, but he quickly backed away from her. "Don't!" Andy growled. "And all them people we slaughtered. Purifiers, cops, those AnthropCorps guys....this is gonna continue. I you want me to stay with you? Have you all lost your minds?!"

Lauren fought back her tears. "None of this matters!" She told her brother. "All of us our dangerous, one way or another. We're mutants, Andy! We're the 'bad guys' as far as the rest of the world is concerned. But we're not all monsters, and you, YOU, are a far better person than you think you are. I know it!" She moved towards Andy and took him by the hand. "I'm not leaving you. Ever! We are Von Struckers, but we can be better than they were. But I don't want to do it alone."

Andy sighed and hesitated. "I don't want to hurt you again."

Lauren leaned against Andy's chest and hugged her brother like her life depended on it. "So don't!" She whispered.

"I don't want anyone suffering because of me," Andy he said desperately. 

"Stay with us, then." Lauren told him earnestly. "We'll even put a dog leash and muzzle on you if it helps."

Despite himself, Andy laughed. Lauren kissed him. "Promise me you're staying!"

Andy looked down at his sister. He bit his lower lip. "Okay," the boy said finally. "I'll stay."

Lauren hugged her little brother tighter.  
\-------------

Two days after their arrival, Reed and Lauren Strucker arrived in San Francisco with John Proudstar, Clarice Wong, Marcos, Diaz and Lorna Dane with their daughter Dawn, and Sage who was one of the first mutants to return to the Underground. The demise of the Inner Circle brought a financial windfall to the Mutant Underground, as Sage had transferred offshore accounts from the control of the former. This allowed the Underground to expand it's operations. The safehouse tower block in San Francisco would be the MU's operational H.Q. in the south-west of the United States.

Reed and Caitlin were teary eyed at the sight of their children. Caitlin gasped at the sight of the deep gouge of the bullet wound atop Andy's shaven head. 

"My baby boy! Caitlin whispered as she clung to her youngest child. Reed had one arm around Lauren and another around both his wife and son. "Thank God!" He kept saying every minute since his arrival.

For now, things looked okay for the Struckers and the Mutant Underground, except for the surveillance van outside the building, monitoring the steady stream of new mutant arrivals to the former Hellfire Club safehouse. They were awaiting back-up before the AnthropCorps raid could begin.

Will the Mutant Underground survive this one?

The End.


End file.
